First of all I'm not saying the voicing is bad or the game doesn't need alot of conversations.
The problem is that many NPCs are repeating the same phrases over and over and over again, it's damn annoying. For example: (no quest spoilers) the burning ship in the docks. Man, the NPCs repeated the same thing like 50 times when I was wandering by the docks and it took only 2 minutes to explore everything. The two people in the library also, they repeat the same stuff every 10 seconds.
There was also (I won't say name & etc to prevent spoilers) that guy you have to escort to the city who repeated to death that he was being attacked while in fact he wasn't, I was defending him.

Can Larian look into this issue? I can't be the only one annoyed by this.

Yeah I just watched the live stream and noted that a companion was repeating the same lines a lot. Hopefully there will be some options to disable or at least tone it down some.

Yes, they really need to add an option to disable voice on non essential NPCs.

I admit some places its obviously an issue. Ie. After the first orc fight.

If you've ever played Sacred 2 or about any MMO you know all about chronic NPC talking. :P I can't say its 'really' bad yet. Since I do enjoy the voices. But if you have NPCs idling in the same area repeatedly spamming it definitely needs to be addressed. There has to be some degree of cool down.

Indeed. Hopefully this can be modded, so if Larian doesn't do something about it the community can add a cooldown or something.

There is no need for NPCs to repeat their lines every 15 to 30 bloody seconds!
Turned off voice 30 minutes in.

I dont care if modded or otherwise but someone needs to address this..

My guess is they will address this, I wonder how much of this we are going to get? No one saw this until today, so there is no feedback until now.

Does anyone know if the dialogue shows as it loops? Continuously? If so, that may have been an oversight when adding the voices. If everyone talked in Baldur's Gate it would be equally as annoying.

However, I've notices on Twitch that some play through don't seem to exhibit this looping syndrome, or not as much, or not the same group of characters.

I'd recommend a 30-60 second (or so) timer before saying the dialogue again. Usually these types of dialogue are an indication of a quest or situation you would want to see about.

That being said, the boat on fire should spam, but a bit less. It's urgent so it needs to keep happening until dealt with.

You can always turn the voice down to 0 as we did in Beta. Not sure if this is something that need to be fixed that urgently as I am sure there are tons of other kinks they have to work out at this moment.

I like the voice work you guys do. Don't make me turn it off.

Turning the voice down to 0 isn't a solution, is a lazy workaround.
NPCs aren't supposed to repeat their lines every 5 seconds in ANY game, period.

If the game is initially design for no voices, then it can be designed to show more information. So they just need to tweak the frequency of overhead dialogue when it comes to villagers and such.

I absolutely agree. This is irritating.

I think rather than upping the timer on how often the NPCs repeat themselves, it would be better to reduce how far away voices can be heard (or at least a more dramatic reduction in the volume of the voice over distances).

I don't want to have to stop in front of an NPC for a minute or two to see if they're going to say something because I happened to arrive between comments. But that's what will happen if NPCs speak less often. Better to make it so you can't hear them until you're much closer. That will help to cut down on the crosstalk.

I'm also thinking voice volume should be linked to the character's position, not the camera's position. Being able to focus on a conversation happening down the street from you is understandable and all.. if you're Superman. Our characters are not.

maybe not so much the volume, but the reverb itself.

If I hear someone speaking far away, I want them to sound like the background vocals in Baldur's Gate (which was not a voice, but simply ambiance) where they sound far away and outside.

The background audio in that game was amazing btw. No game has matched that lately.

No, no, no, the timer definitely needs to be increased. There is currently only a few seconds between the same set of sentences, both in the chat and with the voice overs, leading to major audio and visual spam.

This is so annoying that I had to mute the voices after a few minutes in Cyseal. Please create a timer of at least 1 minute between repeating the same set of sentences. Otherwise it's a major break in the immersion. The voice overs must have really been rushed in for such an annoying problem to be overlooked.

There are some good ideas in this thread, but the frequency of the NPC voice overs should really be the main concern, as far as audio goes.

In terms of code, yeah the voices were probably rushed. But at least the performance of them WASN'T.

#1 reason why indie games suffer with voice acting isn't because of the voice actors, but the direction and how many takes it takes to be "good enough".

That isn't something you find in a voice acting studio, though having better voice actors makes it way faster.

Yeah, the music, ambient sounds and voice acting are all pretty good. I'm sure that the frequency of the V.O. will be a quick and easy fix. If they could also fade the volume and apply a muffled effect as the distance to the NPC increases, that would be even better.

Also the farm animals are a bit much too, but that is something that isn't as bad.

Well, good to see that I'm not the only one. :P

I'd definitely like to see the voiced text set to a much, much larger delay. And when in a conversation, ALL other voices should be disabled. When I got to the bridge outside town, the guards talking to their tamed orc were all overlapping each other, then there was Moira talking to herself. With all those voices in my ear, I struggled to read the plot dialogue.

I wound up turning off voices, but that's a real shame. I like the VO work. Just... less of it, please. >_>

+1 to

* repeating way too often
* not fading out/muffling/becoming indistinct nearly quickly enough with distance

I basically need to turn down the voice volume to 0 or near-zero to play.

+1 This is the great idea
Larian do you remember Divinity 2? So non-essential NPS`s was repeating their lines with defined period of time but it was quite good

Yeah, they need to lower the frequency of the chatter/sounds.

Turning the voice down to 0 does not shut them all up!
The Charmed She-Orc dialogue just keeps looping and looping
with the voice slider at 0

Its giving me a headache!
not what I expected my first day playing the game would be like

I like the talking characters! :U

Dragons Dogma, now there was an example of people nattering too much. So far as Im concerned I havent had any real bad issues from walking around the for about four hours. I tend to block out the exact words themselves and just enjoy the fact the noise makes the city feel alive.

That said the one voice that was annoying me was in
(slight spoiler from start of game)

in the infirmary, that guy rolling around in pain, I felt like screaming "would you please shut it and die quietly, I am trying to have a conversation here"

I started another thread about this before I saw this...

Agreed +1

I cannot read NPC quest dialog because I'm extremely distracted by the NPC background voice chatter... its repetitive and loud and overlapping. Should be squelched when dialog with an NPC is open.

Just adding my +1 here. Am highly annoyed by the repetition of NPCs. There is nothing that breaks immersion faster than good dialogue and voice acting repeated ten times in a row. Just check out BioShock: Infinite for an example of how it's possible to not have a silent game, yet still refuse to repeat NPC chatter.

Anyway, just my two sense on the matter. The core game is great, and obviously the product of lots of hard work and passion!

yeah..

+1 to this request. Love the chatter, great voice acting, but it's a bit overwhelming.

simple solution: insert banter time interval option

I just got to the docs in the first city and I was greatly impressed by the voice acting. However, after 10th loop it started to act on my nerves and I found it difficult to concentrate on reading conversations... Just give 60 seconds of cooldown and I will be happy. BTW - great game!

Yep, this one is completely ridiculous... There's so many repetitive lines being spammed via voice - eventually it gets so infuriating that you can't even concentrate on reading dialogue text while talking to NPCs.

This has completely broke the game for me.

I've started to dread walking into any area that has one of the spamming NPCs.

By the way...

Even simpler solution: change the builtin interval to something reasonable.

that way people will complain that it's either too long or still too short. allow people to set the time, and let it rest.

Same with me. Even with all audio sliders at O, there's still faint voice and fx.

Supposedly that's the echo effect you get in caves, etc. that's being triggered somewhere and never being cleared. The only place I can think of where you'd get an echo before entering town is the tutorial dungeon?

Whatever, +1 for me too, I can't talk to npcs near other people because I can't focus on the dialogue. I love the voices, I just can't stand to hear them say the same thing thirteen times consecutively. It's exactly like a broken record.

Hi everyone,

my first post on Forums

Loving the game since launch yesterday but have to agree about too much voice, especially in the market area of the village near the start. Certainly sounds like a bustling market, a veritable cacophony of sound in fact!
I believe this occasionally causes the game to crash for me, tried settings the graphics down from beautiful to high then medium but still crashed, set audio from high to low quality and no more crashes.
(Will send further details as a bug report but just wanted to add to thread)

Otherwise, game is wonderful.

Have to agree. Was near the captain at Cyseal Harbour, and one of his crew kept exclaiming to another NPC, "Remember that time when he--?!" You hear the same comment half a dozen times in 1 minute--it gets quite irritating. Also agree that it picks up too many comments at full volume full screens away (ie when you meet Arhu).

Just a thought--if there is concern that delaying NPC comments excessively would make it difficult for players to experience, maybe it could be voiced only every 3rd or 4th time. The text can still display as frequently as it does, only without the VO most times.

It looks as if this problem is driving EVERYONE nuts. Don't they test this stuff? They can't have or the whole Larian team would be in the loony asylum repeating themselves.

No, the voice acting was literally added only the last day before release and the people participating in beta did not have any opportunity to test it.

My thought exactly . I would like to see the guy that coded this sitting patiently, with audio ON, and reading all dialogues while the NPCs are babbling all the time. I had read some texts twice to understand them. Actually I even attacked guys in docks in the first town so that they shut up...

Yea, voiceover itself is very nice, but it seems as if it was placed in the game in great haste. Very sloppy. I'm hearing echoes, non-stop repeating npc lines, voice sources coming from all directions all at once, creating cacophony, inaudible protagonists lines when camera is not centered on them etc. I got annoyed with this very quickly and just turned them off completely until better days when someone manages to edit voices in the game properly.
Actually, it was quite nice and quiet without any voices in the beta. Not sure why the devs decided to put them at the last minute, it was not in any stretch goal, no one was really expecting it, or asked to do them on popular demand. Seems like a waste of time and money, that would've been better spent on polishing the game.

It looks like I am the only one who does not care.
I played for 4 hours yesterday and the whole time I was in Cyceal. The only irritating thing was the two wounded man in the "hospital".
Maybe I am used to block not important sounds since I work in open office with few other ppl talking.

Definitely like the voices, very atmospheric, didn't even mind the amount really, (although was a little too much in the aforementioned marketplace), was mostly just the crashing for me

I haven't NOBODY HAS AS MANY FRIENDS AS A MAN WITH MANY CHEESES really found NOBODY HAS AS MANY FRIENDS AS A MAN WITH MANY CHEESES it that NOBODY HAS AS MANY FRIENDS AS A MAN WITH MANY CHEESES disturbing.

The frequency is a bit high, but the voice acting itself has surprised me positively, really well done.

The incessant repetitiveness is annoying. Please, Larian, tone down the voice frequency!

On the flipside, at least it's not as annoying as Thief, where the same lines are echoed within a few seconds of each other, overlapping.

One example (out of many):


"Are you still pining about the abattoir?"
.........."Are you still pining about the abattoir?"

Now *THAT* is annoying.

Still, I can't disagree with an option to adjust the rate of repetition. I think, rather than spending those last few days to add voices in, they should have held them back for a patch. They were trying hard to make it a better game, but they were pushing themselves too much, and the game suffers because of it.

I'm sure they'll eventually fix these problems, but it's definitely a negative for those playing on launch day (personally, I'm holding off for the moment).

Larian updated the game today and said that they are reading users feedback, I hope they read this thread too.

+1

I love the game but the repetitive NPC chatter is beyond immersion breaking it hits my nerves. I slider from 10 secs to 2 minutes would be my sweetspot imho.

Larian did update the game but that was a language pack update or something no fixed.

(http://steamcommunity.com/app/230230/discussions/0/522730702197954636/)

I just hope they read my susggetions lol. and they also could like them

+1 more

Enjoying everything in the game except for the immediate repeating npc lines as well

a big annoyance any time you're going to be standing in one place for more than 30 seconds.

The frequency (and limited variety, but less so) of the dialogue is certainly an annoyance.

I finally decided to delve in, and I'm not minding the chatter, myself. I tend to tune it out, so it becomes background noise, and sort of makes the city feel alive.

This should be number 1 fix priority at the moment. The NPCs should just say their line like once and then just use text to repeat. I've had to turn off the sound all together after walking around in town for a bit because the repeating dialogs are not only annoying but distract me from reading the text.

I agree, there needs to be a 20-30 second delay before voice lines

Oh, thank Christ. I'm glad this is being acknowledged so widely. This issue reminds me of the "gather your party" repetition annoyance that plagued Baldur's Gate on its initial release, which I was present for, and the fan reaction was identical to this. Once the first mod came out, that simply added an equal length of an empty sound file, everyone was happy and the game became better -- although, I have to admit, this is worse. As I'm writing this, the game is on in the background, and this cow keeps mooing continually.

I .. I .. I can't talk to you now, cow; please stop.

The main problems for me is the repetition in conjunction with the overlapping.
Voices repeating over and over is bad enough, but when they start playing over the top of each other in busy areas, it just becomes a cacophony of noise.
I'd read about this issue before booting it up today, and wondered before hand how bad it'd be. Bad enough to stop me from playing and to find out what's happening about it.

Hopefully it's just a bug, and they've already fixed it.
But I'd like it so that the audio is only triggered once when you are pretty close to the NPCs.
For it to be based on line of sight.
And for there to be a good couple of minutes between the loops.

Bumping this thread for justice.

no one has as many friends as a man with many cheeses!

i just registered on the forums to add my voice (no pun intended) to the complaints about the incessant NPC chatter. i love this game, but this bug is bordering on game-breaking

it just kills the superb immersion that has been built up by the devs. I really hope its patched ASAP.

I finally got to the marketplace in Cyseal (and even toured the entire town) to see what all the complaining about.

I didn't hear anything even remotely annoying with the voice volume or frequency. Certainly nothing as bad as this thread makes it sound. To me, the market sounded like a marketplace (and the friend I was playing with also agreed). It's not supposed to sound like a library. And I didn't have a problem hearing the personal conversations I was having (with other NPCs, nor with my friend on voice-chat).

I really feel some of you are blowing this out of proportion. Maybe the volume could scale down more quickly with range, but I personally don't see anything drastic needing to happen here.

Now, I will say that the one place the voices do tend to get both loud and annoying is in closed environments where a lot of reverb occurs. I think the amount of echo is over the top.

No it's not blowing it out of proportion. This needs a fix asap. It's not about volume but how often they repeat their lines. It's annoying and distracting. After 10 minutes in town I had enough.

It's not blown out of proportion in the slightest. In about 25 years of playing most all PC RPG's that are released, I've never heard any spammed voice audio as ridiculous as what's going on in certain areas of this game.

Like thisisnighthawk said, it's not about the volume, it's about the incessant loop of same phrases.

as others have said, its not about the "VOLUME" but rather the frequency of repetition. standing on the pier for about 2 mins and i hear the same 2 or 3 lines voiced over and over about 7 times. and from a HUGE distance away

Agreed, too repetitive, especially in some areas. It's too bad since the voice acting is actually really good.

This needs to stay on the first page. Game is really awesome and I actually like the voice acting, but this NPC repetition is driving me nuts.

100% agree with this thread. While I love the chatter while entering a marketplace, it is repetitive to a fault. Plus, you need to be far away before it doesn't sound like they are yelling in your ear. Voice acting is great and just fine, just need to lower the volume, increase the timer where they repeat, (if repeating is necessary) or add more dialog. The latter would be harder to implement, so I'm all for lowering the frequency.

Also created an account just to agree with this thread. Who knows, maybe it's a grand ploy by Larian to get more people signed up! Seriously though, this HAS to be fixed. Between the moaning she-orc and the groaning sick men while I'm trying to read dialogue I thought I was going to rip out what little hair I have left. Incredibly disappointing and confusing why this thread on here, nor on Steam, hasnt gotten any official response.

Vendors should probably bark only like once every two minutes, and staggered so they don't all bark at the same time.

And of course, as we've said before many times, the range at which you can hear the voices, and the range at which the NPC chatter enters the dialogue box should be reduced to match your hearing stat (which is around 12m). A 30 meter range is just too large, even if it is just text. It spams the log terribly with a 30m range. What the heck is the point of the "Hearing" stat if it doesn't actually do anything?

So, you're suggesting people would be happy with the same amount of background chatter, but in the form of more unique lines to cut down on how often the same statement is repeated?

I found that doubtful, and it's also highly unlikely that the developers are going to be able to add in more unique voiced lines. Which, unfortunately, leaves us with only two solutions:

1) Increase the impact distance has over volume, so distant chatter is more quiet, heard less clearly, and less often from far away.

2) Increase the amount of "dead air" time between comments.

I'm not a big fan of that second option, as I would rather have constant chatter in a place like the market instead of a lot of eerie silence. Having played the alpha/beta I'm familiar with how silence in the marketplace sounds, and it feels much more alive now by comparison.

I think the first option is worth trying out before taking the more drastic route of the second. In the end, people on all sides of this are going to be disappointed with the results. Where as one person may be satisfied with a 30 second interval between NPC statements, another person won't be happy until it's 1 minute, or 2 minutes, etc.

Also, some of you may need to tweak your voices volume setting, because it really isn't as deafening as some of you are making out, and I can only assume your voice setting is cranked too high.

There's a certain goblin merchant on a certain bridge yelling at a certain pack animal, and the loop has 0 delay. It's incredibly distracting, especially with the character's way of speaking. It sounds like he's just speaking a single, unending sentence.



Please, please, please make it stop. >_<

I think I'm one of the few that simply doesn't notice all the chatter much. It hasn't seemed as overbearing as some are implying in my experience. I know it is there, but it's not overwhelming. This might be because I'm not playing the game with headphones, and am running sound through my computer speakers.

That being said, I wouldn't be opposed to staggering the NPC chatter, and lowering the distance it could be heard from. I would still like to hear a dull buzz in the background when in a city simply for immersion. A city environment shouldn't be devoid of ambient sounds and the "hustle and bustle", but all of that also shoulnd't be so overwhelming as to distract the player.

In addition to the suggestions here, I think it would also help that while in dialogue, voices automatically toggle off, or are reduced to like volume 1 or 0. I'm hearing plenty of people say they shut off their volume as soon as they engage in dialogue to help them read.

This is really getting to me now. I can't concentrate on the story or the dialogue, it's ruining the game for me.

I am going to put it down until something is done about it.

-Fixed the repeating voice problem that drove everybody bananas
-Muted banter voices while in dialog or trade

How cool is that? Thank goodness I don't have to stop playing.

Thanks Larian, now I can play with Voices volume up.

I would like to thank Larian for being so quick on addressing this. Yesterday i stoped playing because of this repetitive chatter, i was realing going nuts and had to stop playing, couldnt focus on the text dialogs.

So i was expecting a couple of days to fix it and on the next day, voila? it's fixed! it's great now and i'm having a blast playing the game.

Thanks for listening to fans, larian. /hug

Well, this fix (which I didn't feel was necessary in the first place) has had a negative impact.

I've noticed that there seems to now be a limit to how many comments will be spoken aloud at the same time (I assume to cut down on the amount of crosstalk). However, as the game doesn't prioritize one comment over the other (e.g. random vendors versus your companion or main characters commenting on something that just happened), I've ended up missing out on a number of more important comments which were not voiced, or even cut off mid-statement as a pair of nearby commenting vendors consume all the available audio slots.

Joy. Would rather have the noisier chatter back (as I had no problems focusing on the specific statements I wanted to hear) rather than voices being randomly silenced to appease players who were apparently raised in a library-like environment and can't deal with sound.

banter has been reduced in the latest patch :P

Remember this is text so you can't tell tone, take this is the nicest way one possibly can.

It was their opinion like yours. They > 1, you = 1. I'm not going to get in what is wrong or right here in the choice.

You mention you miss tips this way now... well in Beta we had no voices and we never complained about missing tips then.

What it sounds like to me is more tweaking is ultimately needed.

A few problems with those statements:

1) People generally don't run to the forum to talk about how happy they are with something. Rather, they come to complain about something (or ask questions). It is never surprising to see more people complaining about a feature on a forum (instead of posting to support it). Also, forums represent a tiny, tiny percentage of the people playing a game. All of that makes the "majority" argument very tricky and debatable, which is why they're often referred to as the "vocal minority".

2) In beta we did not have voices, but what we did have was text above the head that remained in place *MUCH* longer than it does now. With the addition of voices that text visibility has (for some reason) been reduced to ~2 seconds or less, making it very difficult to catch without the audio (and probably because they thought it was unnecessary to display it as long due to the addition of the voice-overs).

No one has as many friends as the man with many cheeses!

This is something I can definitely get behind. I'm fine with the voices and the writing, but it needs to come *much* less frequently. I haven't been this annoyed with NPCs since Serana would hound me every five seconds while crafting in Skyrim. And in D:OS I can't FRD the cheese vendor across the city in reprisal.

I'm not ashamed to admit it can be very difficult to read and process silent text while being shouted at about potatoes.

This is odd. I am still finding the npc chatter to be looping rather too frequently. For example, the guys on pier near the scroll merchant. The drone on about the same 2 things in infinite loop. Driving me bonkers anytime I got to buy stuff from that merchant :-(

I normaly realy like your posts, you always seem a realy cool guy with good discussions going around and reasonable ideas, but in this i realy disagree with you, especialy in the tone you address to other people just because they don't agree with you.

I could say that you are a person that was raised in a nut-house like environment and can't deal with reading text in a chat window and you come here and QQ on something that even larian fixed, but ofc i won't because i understand you are just upset and you already proven you can do much more than that.

Every single person i showed this game said they couldn't understand all the random chatter and that was weird and distracting with all the constant looping. I'm happy larian fixed it. The side-effect you mention is indeed true on very rare ocasions, but even if it was voiced, there was danger you couldn't even understand it if there was another random chatter on top of it's audio like a lot of times it was happening.

My biggest problem with this thread are the blatent overreactions. The "This is so bad I can't play anymore." comments are enough to warrant a /facepalm. In a way I really wish it had taken the developers weeks to address this because it would have been interesting to see how many people were serious and how many were just blowing hot air.

I also absolutely believe that at least some of the people complaining (and threatening to put the game away) never made an effort to adjust the various volume settings first. I, for example, have my voice volume set in a way that my characters are talking at a realistically normal conversation level (rather than sounding like they're yelling or talking annoyingly loud). As such, anyone further away from my character (like most of the NPCs in the market) are obviously quieter and not at all overwhelming; they are instead easily tuned-out background noise.

In the end, many of the posts in this thread are coming across like that fellow in another thread who posted that Divinity was absolutely unplayable unless the movement speed was increased by a factor of five. I'm not seeing a whole lot of "The sounds in places like the markets are kind of annoying.. would you consider maybe doing something about it?", which I could empathize with (even I'm not having the same experience). Instead it is "OMG OMG OMG DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE SOUND UNPLAYABLE!!!111ELVENTY-ONE!" and so my reaction has gone to a similar extreme (albeit in the opposite direction).

Since people do not take to the forums to praise, apparently, let me do it. I am extremely happy with the chatter reduction. It would be even more awesome with volume based on distance, but I can now read dialogue without machine gun spammed chatter distracting me. A major step forward. I was ready to put away the game, but then luckily Larian fixed this hugely annoying problem and the game is now immensely playable. Kudos!

volume based distance: +1

They have it, just in many cases it could be better. Heck, in some cases it's overdone - some NPC chatter can't be heard unless you're almost sitting right on top of them (Jake the dog, for instance - although you need Pet Pal to know that). The fish thief in Cyseal is another - his entire conversation with the player is voiced (which is unusual compared to the other NPCs), but good luck hearing the voice-over it if you're more than a few feet away. It's so much lower than the other voices.

Any solution for that?

My QuietDayOnTheMarket mod addresses the voices issue. Just follow the link in my signature (Nexus).

(How is Bairdotr doing?)

Well, I'm not sure about the reference to the problem being "fixed", as I've recently started playing and one of the big two stand-out problems in the game is the relentless repeating barks from people in town. I've found myself walking around trying to find a quiet area where I don't have to listen to the infinite looped repeating lines. Turning voice down is not a good solution as I'm happy to have a conversation with an NPC, I just don't want the unimportant spamming from bystanders.

Abraxas* made a mod to address that for the EE on PC, as stated above: Quiet Day On The Market.